xvi AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
result of habit, of the conditioning of the individual by his early upbringing. In addition, there are two other kinds of sanctions. There is first the sanction of moral coercion as distinguished from physical coercion; the individual who does wrong is subjected to open expressions of reprobation or ridicule by his fellows and thus is shamed. What is effective here is the direct expression of public sentiment. When a person whose behaviour is unsatisfactory is subjected to some sort of boycott we have a condition intermediate between the moral and satirical sanctions and the penal sanctions proper.
Secondly, there are the various kinds of ritual or supernatural sanction. The most direct of these is constituted by the unquestioned belief that certain actions bring misfortune upon the person who is guilty of them. For us as Christians the expected misfortune is eternal torment in the fires of Hell; for an African it is most commonly sickness or death. In any particular instance, the mode of behaviour which is a failure to observe ritual obligations may or may not be also subject to a moral sanction; it may be reprehensible or it may be merely foolish; in the former case it is a sin, in the latter an unlucky act or failure to act. In other words, in the case of sin there is a moral sanction of reprobation added to the belief that the sin will lead to misfortune for the sinner.
When a person has committeed a ritual offence, his own concern if it is a matter of luck, or both that and public sentiment if it is one of sin, will induce him to perform some ritual act of expiation or purification by which the effects of his misdeed are believed to be obviated. In some societies the sinner,must perform a penance, which may be regarded as a self-inflicted punishment.
But in some instances it may be believed that the effects of the sin will fall not only upon the sinner, but upon the whole community, or that the whole community is polluted by the sin; and the offending person may be put to death or driven out of the community as a collective act of expiation. Here we come back again to the penal sanction. Thus in Ashanti crimes such as incest or murder or sacrilege are sins—are conceived as offences against the gods—which bring misfortune upon the whole country, so that the criminal must be put to death in order that the misfortune may be avoided.
The kinds of belief which underlie the ritual or supernatural sanctions may provide a basis for what may be called indirect